1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of elongated spreading and cutting tables for use in the garment manufacturing industry, and more particularly, relates to a mobile, air-equipped transfer table suitable for moving multiple layers of spread and/or cut fabric between stationary, similar air-equipped work tables.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the garment manufacturing industry, in order to increase production rates and to decrease production costs, most major manufacturers have been employing elongated, sturdy, modular work tables for use in spreading the fabric in layers, in cutting the multi-layers of spread fabric into configured patterns and in bundling the cut patterns for delivery to a plurality of sewing machines. In further efforts to reduce manufacturing costs by reducing the number of attendants required and to permit easy and rapid movement of the stacked layers of fabric from one table to another table, the prior art modular cutting tables have recently been modified by equipping such tables with forced air means.
In the latest such air-equipped tables, the top of each table has been provided with a plurality of equally spaced holes and forced air produced by a suitable air pump system has been designed to be equally applied across the entire table surface through the air holes. In such an arrangement, a boundary layer of air forms intermediate the top surface of the table and the bottom layer of the stacked fabric in a manner to allow substantially weightless movement of heavy fabric spreads over the table, through guidance of but a single worker. One such air-equipped work table has previously been designed by the present applicant and is fully described in co-pending application Ser. No. 749,453 filed June 27, 1985, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,664, and entitled "Air-Equipped Table". One such air-equipped work table is presently being manufactured and sold by the assignee of the present application under the trademark "AIR-TEX".